Healthy plant-based recipes full of good stuff whilst being free from refined sugars and wheat. The food blog is a space to kickstart your inner creativity!

My holiday in the Spanish sunshine last week was filled with lots of salads and fruit, lots and lots of biiiiiig salads.... something like this...

Ok, so there was oats in there too. I love my porridge, even if it is boiling hot outside. :-)

See the strange looking bar thing in the middle on the left. That was my version of an 'ice cream open sandwich'. My friends bought ice creams and whilst I could have gone ahead and ordered a sorbet, I really didn't fancy the sugar overload but not wanting to feel left out of a sweet treat I came up with this idea. I found the healthiest granola bars in the supermarket (though struggled to read the ingredients in Spanish so I had to guess a bit and hope for the best) and then topped them with mashed banana and a sprinkle of nuts. After a couple of hours in the freezer they made the perfect treats! I will try and make a 'proper' version for the blog soon with a homemade biscuit base.

Anyway back to salads. I got a bit of a taste for them and then when I arrived home my new spiraliser had been delivered. I gave it try on Sunday evening and OH MY GOODNESS... BEST. THING. EVER!!! (It really does deserve capitals and all those exclamation marks) why didn't I buy one sooner?

Game changer.

Life changer.

Ok let's calm down a little here. Breathe.

I think i'm still i holiday mode and a little more giddy than usual. Well that's my excuse. I hope you don't mind seeing more spiraliser themed recipe around those parts over the next few months. :-)

This was supposed to be a quick experiment but it worked so well it was worthy of the blog, the dressing was amazing too and was a quicker easier version ofthis raw dressing but equally as tasty.

Do you have a spiraliser? What have you 'spiralled' and also what doesn't work...let me know!

(If you haven't got one...do it! You wont regret it.)

Recipe: Curly wurly salad

Serves 1

Ingredients:

1 small carrot

1/3 cucumber

1/3 courgette

1/2 cup cooked black beans

1 tsp sesame seeds to sprinkle over the top

Dressing (a single serving):

Ingredients

2 tsp almond/cashew butter

1 tbs lemon juice

1 tbs water

1 tsp liquid aminos

¼ cup raw red pepper

1tbs nutritional yeast

½ tsp paprika (used smoked if you have it)

Method

Spiralise the veggies and pile onto a plate.

Blend the dressing ingredients together in a mini blender and drizzle over salad. Top with sesame seeds and serve.

(note: I was testing out all three blades on the spiralizer hence the cucumber is more of a ribbon effect and the carrot and courgette more like noodles of two different thicknesses.)

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